Climate change in Russia’s Arctic: Perceptions, response, implications

In Russia, the Arctic zone is regarded as a cornerstone in the country’s economic future. It is also a region with big climate challenges. Over many years Russian scientists have noted the changing climate. While there has been little disagreement that climate change is real, for long there was no shared understanding of urgency and causes. However, now the bulk of Russian climate science is in line with the International Panel on Climate Change. But this has not had any direct impact on the ambitious plans for development in Russia’s Arctic zone. A review of over-arching planning documents for Russia’s Arctic zone shows that the Russian government for long assigned low priority to climate challenges. However, at the same time a far-reaching process as a follow-up to Russia’s ratification of the Paris agreement started. Published documents include guidelines for adaptation to climate change. This documents largely frame adaptation to climate change as a technical challenge and the outlined approach is bureaucratic and administrative. But since 2020 a discourse emerged which framed international climate politics and the energy transition as a serious economic challenge for Russia with implications for national security, given the country’s high dependence on revenues from oil and gas exports. At the same time, the direct costs stemming from climate change and adaptation needs were discussed at the highest political level. Both processes pointed to a need for fundamental changes in the Russian economy, with potentially big consequences for industrial development in the Arctic. But even though a low-carbon strategy was adopted in the autumn of 2021, by no means full agreement had been established about a new economic policy In Russian society the role of anthropogenic factors as a cause of climate change is recognized more widely today than in the early 2010s, but Russian societal knowledge retains that it is important to also include natural climate cycles as a factor. Many people are skeptical of knowledge spread by politicians and the administration. This leaves it open how scientific knowledge could be translated into policy measures to combat climate change in a manner that would be seen as legitimate under the Russian societal scrutiny. The pause in Russian participation in international climate research does not only imply loss of access to important data from Russia, it also means that results from international research will have less impact in Russia. With the war in Ukraine, most policy development not connected to the war has anyway stopped. Still, regional strategies ordered before the invasion are being issued, what existed of political energy has gone. At the same time, the gloomy predictions for Russian energy exports presented in the low-carbon strategy have come true, although for a different reason. The climate changes have of course not paused. A pertinent question is how economic actors place themselves in this situation. In the short term, Russian companies are preoccupied with survival in a new economic reality. But almost all big companies have had strategies for adaptation to climate change and climate policies. We have started to look at their relevance in the situation created by the war and an uncertain outlook for the future. One indicator is how they foresee their possibilities in international markets. The more exposed they are the more likely they are to take signals from outside into consideration. But it is quite clear that climate knowledge only constitutes a small part of the basis for decisions in the companies. After the successful development of liquefied natural gas projects in north-west Siberia, Taymyr further east is the center of the next stage of Arctic industrial development. Projects there require enormous investments and state support. At the same there are concrete plans for further gas development in West Siberia. All the projects are in permafrost areas. The treatment of these projects will give an indication of possible changes in Russian policy and company strategies, where climate adaptation is one component. A precondition for realization of Russian industrial aspirations in the Arctic is improvement and development of the Northern Sea Route - the sea lanes along the Siberian coast. The official plan is establishment of year-round use of the whole route. Whereas the negative impacts of climate change for developments on land has generally been toned down in official documents, diminishing ice cover caused by climate change is presented positively, as a driver for navigation. In addition, reduced fuel needs and thus less emissions due to shorter sailing distance, is increasingly used as a climate argument in favour of the Northern Sea Route. But further development of the route will to a significant extent be determined by the fate of the industrial projects along the coast.

Rapid climate change in the Arctic, with wide-ranging consequences for societies and human activities, has become an uncontested point of departure in most of the international scholarly literature on the Arctic future. In Russia, however, ambiguity on the causes of global warming and the further climate developments in the Arctic prevails in official documents and statements, positive impacts are often highlighted. Development of the Arctic – mainly involving resource extraction and associated maritime transportation – is regarded as a cornerstone of Russia’s economic future. The project will seek to understand how this economic development may be impacted by climate change. Applying frame analysis, we will examine how climate change is interpreted in different sources of knowledge in Russia, scientific, political and societal, and how companies’ interpretation of physical climate impacts affects the specific adaptation process they choose. We consider knowledge as socially constructed and want to identify what knowledge is used or cited by key industrial actors as they adapt -or do not adapt - to climate change and consider longer term strategies and why some sources of knowledge are chosen over others. The project includes two empirical case studies. One is on Taymyr peninsula, the northern part of Krasnoyarsk Kray in East Siberia, where several resource extraction projects are in various stages of development, all situated in permafrost areas. The second is on development of navigation on the Northern Sea Route, where melting sea ice is expected to improve sailing conditions, but where other climate impacts may have adverse effects.